


The Reverberate Hills

by voleuse



Category: Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-03
Updated: 2007-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>How does he love me?</em> / <em>With adorations, fertile tears, with groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reverberate Hills

**Author's Note:**

> Set mostly before and during Act I, with a teensy bit from Act III. You'll know it when you see it. Title, summary, and headings taken from the text of _Twelfth Night_.

_If music be the food of love, play on,  
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,  
The appetite may sicken and so die._

 

There once was a duke who thought himself a poet, believed in his art to the very marrow of his bones. His poems, however, found few coins, and words dried for lack of inspiration. So he chose to love a woman instead, and hoped her coffers (and her thighs) would find him lovely as well.

He never spoke with her direct. Her beauty was more comfortable from afar.

_'I may command where I adore.'   
Why, she may command me:   
I serve her, she is my lady._

If there was a man more intimate with his lady, Malvolio had yet to meet him. He knew he never would.

He knew her love of honey, of satin, of the lute. He knew the gait of her, and the frustration of her sighs. He knew the way petals fell from her hands at midday, and the way coins trickled through her fingers mid-morning. He knew her lonely, and he would wait.

He knew that if he waited long enough, she would see.

_Lady, you are the cruel'st she alive,  
If you will lead these graces to the grave,  
And leave the world no copy._

Maria rolled her eyes--a saucy wench, that one, and Viola wondered if she would dare to pout so, in her place--and flounced away.

In a moment, Olivia grasped Viola's wrist. Her breath as she grew close was all roses and warmth against Viola's throat. "My lady?" she stammered, barely keeping her voice low.

"Show me, Cesario," Olivia murmured, her fingers sliding over Viola's chin. "How would thy master love me?"

_This is the air; that is the glorious sun;  
This pearl she gave me, I do feel't and see't:  
And though 'tis wonder that enwraps me thus,  
Yet 'tis not madness._

To be sure, the beauty's name had escaped him, but she seemed so confident as she pulled him to her chambers.

The priest's words echoed in Sebastian's ears, the past hour already a whirlwind, and he thought this was a dream.

His wife--wife!--opened her arms to him. Her lips were sweet, her mouth tasting of honey and wine.

He put his grief behind him and took the beauty to bed.

_I was adored once too._

When he had first met Olivia, that very first afternoon, there had been music playing. Enlivened by the jig, the bright sky, and the grin of the juggler in the corner, Andrew had jumped up from his seat, capered round with a garland of roses on his head.

Olivia had laughed at the caper, clapped her hands once together and smiled.

He would have spent the rest of his life trying to make her laugh again.


End file.
